John Anderson Quotes

I think that, you know, this is a different year than most years. We've got to tell the American people that we have to live with less. We have a $13.5 trillion debt. And the only way to do that is an honest campaign with honest people.

Presidential politics has to be about truth telling and not pandering to the public.

You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth.

When in doubt, tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.

When businesses face tough times, one of the first items they cut is overhead expenses. The government should do the same.

I'd be a lot more excited about eliminating earmarks if we reduced all of the spending by whatever the earmarks used to be, but nobody's, apparently, going to talk about doing that.

And one of the most important values of Barack Obama is that he will always level with the American people.

If we make the tough decisions now, we will be one year ahead of 80 percent of the states in the race to economic growth. If we fail to act, we will fall even further behind... by going first, we can become first.

You know, I think what the American people want more than anything else right now is someone who's just going to look them in the eye and tell them the truth, even some truths that they don't like. And - but they have to believe the person's speaking from their heart and are authentic.

We're going to have to raise revenues in some form or fashion, and we're going to have to cut spending, including entitlements of all kind, including the military. We all know this. Lets get on with it.

We're committed to working with Congress to doing what the president said he was always going to do, which is cut the deficit in half over the - over his first term.

What is important is that you're honest with the American people.

Honest talk about the deficit is risky. Voters are more enthusiastic about the abstract notion of deficit reduction than about the painful details of accomplishing it.

In the tough and dangerous world in which we live a President must always say what he means and mean what he says.

As Secretary of Defense my job would be much easier if I didn't have to put up with [budget] cuts.

We're frightened by the interest groups. We act like silly nincompoops. We can't make cuts that cause some sting. We can not even do a thing.

Balancing the budget is like going to Heaven. Everybody wants to do it, but nobody wants to do what you have to do to get there.

Those who make the most and loudest speeches about deficit reduction are least likely to vote against spending.

Can the amazing national debt be paid by a little trifling sum squeezed from year to year out of America?.... Would it not be much superior wisdom, and sounder policy, for a distressed kingdom to retrench the vast unnecessary expenses continually incurred by its enormous vices?

The job of the politician isn’t to tell you what you want to hear, but to tell you what needs to be done.

You don’t tell the truth just some of the time… The American people deserve the truth all of the time.

It is easier to use accounting gimmicks than it is to make hard political choices

We all have to sacrifice to reduce the debt, but we can’t sacrifice our future.

There’s nothing wrong with a politician saying ‘I don’t know.’ Especially in a disaster there is nothing wrong with saying ‘I don’t know.’

We give lip service to the importance of deficit reduction, but Americans oppose every single thing that you might do to reduce the deficit.